With Sonnet 138 William Shakespeare takes a step back and reflects on how both he and his mistress in their relationship with each other are effectively living a lie which they both actively conspire to maintain: she pretends to be faithful to him although she fully knows that he knows that she obviously isn't, and he goes along with it when she treats him as if he were an innocent young lover who not only is still in his prime but who is also uneducated in matters of love, both of which she similarly knows not to be the case.

In Sonnet 137, William Shakespeare draws together two of the themes established by the 'Dark Lady Sonnets' thus far: his mistress's unconventional beauty and her sexual freedom.

Following the near-obsessive punning of Sonnets 135 and 136, which lent them a humorous, light-hearted tone, our poet settles back into a more evenly rounded style that is easier on our eye and ear, but no less acute in its observation and in fact ostensibly more fierce in its assessment of the situation: Sonnet 137, for all its poetic metaphorising pulls no punches and portrays this woman's looks no longer as merely 'different' but as downright ugly, and her body as a place that gives access for all men to ride.

Still, the conclusion it reaches is not one of condemnation, but of contented resignation: this is how it is now and I am thus in my desire and affection tied to her.

In Sonnet 136, William Shakespeare part develops, part reiterates the 'argument', such as it is, of Sonnet 135, that in amongst an abundance of men whom he suggests his mistress is having sex with, he should at least be one, and that she should think of him as her possibly principal lover, mostly on account of his name, Will, which here as in the previous sonnet is treated as synonymous with 'desire', 'the intention to have that desire met', 'the male sexual organ with which this is accomplished', and 'the name of the man or men to whom said sexual organ belongs', as well as the future tense when some or any of this is likely to happen.

The only sense of 'will' present in the previous sonnet that does not come into play here is the female sexual organ, but that does not make this sonnet any less salacious, because for this, Shakespeare here finds another commonly used euphemism at the time, which he latches onto and puns on for a couple of lines instead...

With Sonnet 135 William Shakespeare embarks on an exercise in making as much use of – and mischief with – his own name as poetic acrobatics will allow.

He doesn't entirely avoid, one might argue, falling off the flying trapeze of rhetorical invention and into the safety net of his overall benign, endearing nature, by occasionally misjudging the fine balance there is to be kept between 'bawdy' and 'lewd', though that in itself is obviously a matter of taste.

The near compulsive punning on 'Will' with six different meanings continues into and throughout Sonnet 136 and will later be picked up again briefly, which does pose the question whether he attaches more significance to the name he shares with many men of his era than simply some self-conscious sexual innuendo...

Sonnet 134 continues the argument from Sonnet 133 and now refines the plea made by that sonnet for the young lover to be freed from the mistress's shackles and develops it effectively into a proposed bargain: since he has put his name on the same bond that ties me to you as a guarantor only, I will forfeit myself to you if you release him back to me.

This, the poet immediately realises, is not, however, going to get him anywhere, because the mistress, already in possession of both, will exercise her full title in both and have them both, and so although, as the sonnet also suggest, the young man was only ever brought into her orbit on Shakespeare's behalf, he too is now lost to the mistress and pays Shakespeare's debt to her, without this being enough though to release either of them from being held captive by and thus enthralled to her.

In his astonishingly frank Sonnet 133 William Shakespeare attempts to come to terms with the fact that his young lover is also having an affair with his mistress.

The sonnet in one fell swoop answers two principal questions: first, what 'black deeds' of his Dark Lady's he may be referring to in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131, and second, who the woman might be that appears in the crisis which besets his relationship with the young man between Sonnets 33 and 42.

And while there is of course no external, cast-iron proof that these sonnets do constellate to form a coherent picture, Sonnet 133 is in fact only the first of several sonnets to strongly suggest they do.

What it leaves no doubt about, and what subsequent sonnets will make even more explicitly clear, is that William Shakespeare is for the second time in the collection talking about a relationship that has turned triangular.

With Sonnet 132, William Shakespeare suspends the charge brought against his mistress at the end of the previous sonnet that she is 'black' in nothing so much as in her deeds, and instead pleads with her to have pity on him as he suffers under her disdain for him. At first glance and in isolation it might seem, then, that such 'black' deeds as were mentioned in the closing couplet of Sonnet 131 are nothing but this attitude of hers towards him, but as we saw then and also discuss here, this is unlikely to be the case since a 'ladylike' level of decorum requires a woman at the time to be quite unapproachable and at least apparently aloof, and Sonnet 133 will confirm in no uncertain terms that the deeds in question are of a different nature altogether.
The sonnet thus stands in a long tradition of poetry that has a male lover pine for his unattainable and/or contemptuous mistress, and while on the surface it appears to express itself in positively chaste tones – certainly when compared to the exceptionally explicit Sonnet 129 – it still carries some subtle but nonetheless perfectly evident sexual undertones which it combines, so we get the impression, with just a tinge of irony.

Sonnet 131 connects directly to Sonnet 130 and now invokes a further poetic trope, that of the tyrannous mistress who makes her admirer to groan for love, even though this woman is – as Sonnet 130 made clear – categorically different to those other beauties traditionally so characterised and, as this poem also is fairly quick to point out, her beauty is not universally considered to have the capacity to make a man thus suffer an aching desire for her.

​Shakespeare then once again plays on his awareness of this circumstance and again acknowledges, indeed asserts, that as far as he is concerned she fully has that power so ascribed to other ladies with their light-skinned, fair-haired beauty, and that her darker skin and black hair to him constitute the most beautiful thing there is, only to then in the closing couplet ambush her with a surprising twist: it is not, he startlingly declares, your outward appearance that is black, as in 'ugly,' it is your deeds that make you so, and that, as far as I can tell, is where you get your bad reputation from.